Dan Deacon Quotes

Originally my entire goal with music was for it to be my job. When I sit down to make a beat, I wanna know that I'm gonna get paid from it, and that I can pay my bills and still have money left over to be a person.

As soon as I got into music, I tried to be a working, real artist who gets paid for what he does, who doesn't have a day job.

The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody's tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds.

I don't make my living making records. Maybe someday I will.

All musicians need a day job in the beginning. Unless they still live with their parents, I guess. I'm just lucky that my day job is simply another form of art.

I don't need to sell tons of records, but I want longevity. I want to make music for the rest of my life.

Acting kind of pays my bills more than music does.

I didn't think we would ever make enough money to pay rent by playing music.

I always considered trying to make a living playing music. But it was always really clear to me, at the various stages in my life, that it really wasn't a possibility unless some phenomenal thing happened.

One of my aims was to be paid as well as a plumber. Plumber was better-paid than any performance artist who was always doing this for free. It is so important to make a good living from art. You know, John Cage, until he was 60, he couldn't pay electricity.

We have to make a living and you can't do that playing bluegrass.

It doesn't matter how big the shows are, as long as I'm making a living playing music. That's all that matters to me.

It's been a blessing that I can provide for my family just by doing music. I never thought this would ever be my occupation.

Basically, I'm just a guitar player that figured out I wasn't ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing. So I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business.

I know some bands that don't like touring and are able to make a living producing other bands. There are a lot of ways of carving a living out, but it's become tougher and tougher to figure out what that means.

[Making music] only turned into this weird job in the last year or so. Once I figured that out, I was having a blast.

Ain't no money like music money, because music money don't stop.

I realize that I really have to make music work for me as a career because I can't do anything else.

I'm not stupid enough to want to be famous. But I would like to be able to earn a living playing music.

Playing live and making a living from music was always the only goal.

I never thought being a musician would be something I could make a career out of.

In my mind, I was never going to have the things I wanted if I played music for a living, unless I became a rock star.

When my father saw that I was interested in following such a career he had many reservations. His feeling was that there was no chance to earn a livelihood unless I played jazz or something similar.

In the commercial music world, the folk world, we sell records and concert tickets - this is the way I make a living. You go out, you make your art and hopefully people will put their money down for it. But it's getting hard. I have to be on the road so much to keep the lights on.

Whether you're a DJ, whether you a rapper, whether you a producer, take it seriously. This is an occupation - you can get paid - don't expect to blow up overnight, and appreciate when you do get paid any type of money, appreciate it.